THE INTEGRATION of Black Mountain College

4:55 PM,
Feb. 25, 2014

Students at Black Mountain College's Lake Eden Campus in the mid-1940s.

Written by

Anne Chesky Smith
| Special To The Black Mountain News

In the early- to mid-1900s, the Swannanoa Valley, like most places in the South, was segregated. African Americans could not attend Black Mountain's movie theatre or eat inside restaurants.

Local legend has it that one of the first integrated spaces in the Valley was Roseland Gardens, an African American juke joint run by Horace Rutherford in the Brookside community - now the Flat Creek Road area.

Though Rutherford ran the establishment to cater to African Americans who could not patronize local establishments, he also had a few Caucasian customers as well. For the most part, however, full ...